[Illustration: A BEGGAR AT THE WAY-SIDE.]
"The portion of the Mooskee where you enter it from the new part of Cairo contains a good many European shops, so that you do not come at once into the old-fashioned Orient. But as you go along the scene changes; the shops of the merchants are open to the streets, and the shopmen sit there cross-legged, in full view of everybody, so that you do not have to turn out of the way to see what there is to buy.
"When you think of an Oriental shop you must not picture to yourself an establishment like those on Broadway or other great streets in New York, where dozens or hundreds of clerks are employed to wait on customers, and where the population of a small town might all be attended to at once. A shop in Cairo or any other city of the East is generally about six feet square, and often not so large, and it requires only one man to tend it, for the simple reason that he can reach everything without moving from his place, and there would be no room for any one else. Sometimes he has an assistant, but if so, he does nothing himself except sit still and talk to the customers, while the assistant does all the work of showing the goods. The front of the shop is open to the street, and the floor is about as high as an ordinary table, so that when the goods are spread on the floor the customer can examine them as he stands outside. We shall see more of these shops when we get to the bazaars.
"While we were standing near a shop we saw the owner shutting it up, which he did by folding some wooden doors, very much like the wooden window-shutters we have at home; then he fastened them with a great padlock, and started off with the key, which must have weighed a pound at least. While we wondered at the size of the lock and key, the Doctor called our attention to a man with a cluster of wooden sticks over his shoulder, and told us that the sticks were the keys of a house. What funny things they were! Each of them was nearly if not quite a foot long, and had a lot of wooden pegs near the end; the pegs fit into corresponding holes in a wooden bolt, in the same way that the different wards of a key fit into a lock, but the whole thing is so simple that it does not require much skill for a burglar to get into a house. The keys are so large that they must be slung over the shoulder or fastened to the belt, since they cannot go into an ordinary pocket.